a couple of big wars. which instead of everybody being patriotic and really assist the country, we borrow and do it on a credit card. that's a couple trillion dollars. then we have a crash on wall street. another $2 trillion or $3 trillion. that's where the debt came from. i could lay the blame at the feet of the republican leadership and administration, but we are where we are and we've got to deal with it. it's got to be done in a balanced way. both the revenue side of the ledger and the expense side of the ledger. if our goal is to pay down the debt, you need more revenue and you need less expense. it's both sides. you can't just say, we're going to cut, cut, cut. we're going to take it out of medicare, we're going to privatize social security, we're going to eliminate early childhood education. you've got to deal with the expenses and we know that. but you've got to have revenue and in this instance, the republicans say you know what, we're not going to have additional taxes for millionaires and billio